"This book examines what De Quincey called 'psychological criticism', a mode of studying the 'power' of Shakespeare and Wordsworth, tracing the effects upon the subconscious. That psychological ground is established in his discrimination of 'literature of knowledge' and 'literature of power', and is subsequently developed in his 'reader response' mode of evoking Shakespearean and Miltonic excellence and the literary merits of Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Each chapter examines aspects of the extensive repertory of contraries which inform De Quincey's critical and narrative prose, including his skilled rewriting of a German forgery of a Waverly novel, intended to 'hoax the hoaxer'. Other chapters deal with better-known works: 'Suspiria de Profundis', 'Murder Considered as on of the Fine Arts', 'On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth', 'The English Mail-Coach', and 'Wordsworth's Poetry'.

New insight into each of these works is provided by drawing on a wealth of unpublished manuscripts."--BOOK JACKET.